Blanket's journey reflects the trials of relief to India

Paperwork and holidays among the setbacks in delivering aid

NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press

Published 5:30 am, Friday, October 14, 2005

TILGAM, INDIA - The wool blanket — gray, blue and green plaid with fringe — started out in a New Delhi government supply office. Loaded onto a rickety yellow truck with tents and other Indian-made blankets, it traveled north to earthquake-stricken Kashmir.

That took one day.

The blanket sat for two more days in the town of Baramulla because quake victims did not have the right paperwork. On Wednesday, the blanket was taken to another town but held up by a Hindu holiday.

By Thursday afternoon — five days and 650 miles after it left the Indian capital — the blanket was in the hands of a retired farmer with one kidney and 20 grandchildren.

The blanket's journey reflects the long, bureaucracy-tangled process of disaster relief in India, a country of more than 1 billion people that every year faces some of the world's deadliest natural disasters, often with thousands killed and wounded and thousands made homeless. So far, 23,000 people are confirmed dead, but the death toll is expected to climb further, officials said Thursday.

After a 620-mile trip, government aid workers unloaded the blanket Monday from the truck and packed it with other supplies into the deputy commissioner's compound in Baramulla. The town is surrounded by villages destroyed by Saturday's earthquake.

An estimated 143,000 people in Indian Kashmir were made homeless by the quake. Around Baramulla, when the blanket arrived, hundreds of people already had spent two nights sleeping outside in freezing Himalayan temperatures.

But none of the tents or blankets could be distributed, because victims did not have request slips. They spent Tuesday night outside.

Overnight, from Tuesday to Wednesday, six children in Kashmir died of hypothermia from sleeping outdoors.

Wednesday afternoon, Mohammed Ramzan, a tax official overseeing relief work, arrived in Baramulla from a town 18 miles away. He asked for 1,500 blankets and 55 tents for 97 villages. A.G. Malik, the top officer, gave him the coveted requisition papers — but only for 200 blankets and 10 tents. Soon, the plaid blanket and the other goods were back on a truck.

After an hour-long journey along a poplar-lined mountain highway, past horse-driven carts, careening trucks and quake-destroyed villages, the blanket arrived at the local tax collection office in Pattan.

More than 18,700 people around Pattan were affected by the quake. Night was coming and the air was getting nippy. Ramzan promised villagers standing around waiting for the aid truck that tents and blankets would be handed out quickly.

Then his boss, local tax collection chief Mohammed Shafi, weighed in: Aid distribution had to be supervised by a panel of four officials, and he was the only one present. "The others haven't come to work today," Shafi said. "It's a ... holiday."

Thursday morning, Abdul Jabbar Ganai, a 65-year-old rice farmer who retired after having a kidney removed, waited for a promised aid shipment. Two hours later Ganai had some supplies — including the blanket — but it hardly seemed enough.